I see that Denyse has taken time away from misinterpreting / misrepresenting decade old articles she found on google to visit our little home. Come on in Denyse! Would you like a cuppa? Don’t worry, there are no “Brit Toffs” here.

Listen, as you’ve stopped by, we’d like to have a quick chat about UD:

Frankly, we’re a bit disappointed. We were hoping for some design science to chew on, some CSI calculations to review. But instead we were saddened when we learned that neither Barry Arrington nor KairosFocus understand CSI. We’re going to give you a little time to get up to speed with the literature so that we can re-engage when you know the stuff. You don’t need to make up more acronyms like FIASCO: FOCUS on mainstream ID concepts. We may find fault with Dembski’s work but he was leagues ahead of where you are now.

Start here:

http://www.designinference.com/documents/2005.06.Specification.pdf

There’s an EleP(T|H)ant in the room that you need to come to terms with. Perhaps when you understand the source material we can have a better chat (and therefore more posts).

We also note that UD has expanded to more general science denialism / Republican talking points. Are you sure you want to do that? Pretending to be a science blog was more entertaining.

Well thanks for dropping by. We’ll keep our ears to the ground and report back if scientists ever isolate the specific, “selfish gene”.

This is a little test of reasoning ability. I would prefer that for the first few days, only ID advocates post answers. These questions, and the underlying reasoning, are widely discussed on the internet, so you may have encountered them. If you have, I would appreciate knowing that fact. Also, for those who have seen them before, I would like to know how you did the first time you encountered them.

If anyone spots a typo or logical error, I’d appreciate hearing about is so it can be corrected.

The answers I’m looking for are in three parts:

First — yes or no — can the puzzles be solved by reason, assuming ordinary knowledge of the vocabulary. There are no tricks or unusual meanings involved.

Second, provide the answer.

Third, the provide the reasoning or proof.

Uncommon Descent frequently invokes logic and reason. this is a challenge to anyone who posts at UD. Feel free to post your answers on this thread or at UD.

Here are the questions:

1. [The original editor has been sacked. Re-Edited to straighten out the mess: The price of a cheeseburger is $2.20, the price of a plain hamburger plus the price of the added cheese.] A plain hamburger costs two dollars more than the added cheese. How much does a plain hamburger cost?

2. In Elbonia, one person in ten thousand has Ebola. A new test is so good that anyone who is infected will test positive. But three percent of uninfected people will also test positive. John, a citizen of Elbonia tests positive. What is the probability that John has Ebola?

3. I have a deck of picture cards. They have automobiles on one side and living things on the other side. I have looked through them, and I think they follow the following rule: if a card has a GM automobile on one side, it will have an animal on the other side. After shuffling, I deal out four cards.

Cat, Ford, Petunia, Chevy

What cards must I turn over to test my hypothesis?

4. William is tweeting Betty, but Betty is tweeting John. William is in love, but John is not. Is a person in love tweeting a person who is not in love?

5. Elbonia has invented a treatment for Psoriasis. During a recent blind test, of the patients who were given the treatment 197 improved and 95 did not.

Of the patients who were given a placebo, 45 improved and 20 did not.

Is the treatment effective?

Anyone here ‘skeptical’ of Dawkins’ ‘memetics’ and his notion of ‘memes’? If not, why not?

The Birth of the Messiah

Of course, a “true skeptic” denies that Jesus ever existed. If not, why not?

Merry Christmas!

A dedicated home to spare other threads.

I’m going to start with Walto’s claim that Keith called him an anti-semite. I looked through and couldn’t find any evidence of this.

Ask, and ye shall receive!

During recent discussions, it was suggested that Darwin’s Doubt raised unanswerable questions for the theory of evolution. Discuss.

H/T Patrick at AtbC:

http://www.lulzcode.com/idbots.html

We’ll be hearing about this from UD. Might as well play with it here.

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-25156510

In the smell-aversion study, is it thought that either some of the odour ends up in the bloodstream which affected sperm production or that a signal from the brain was sent to the sperm to alter DNA.